Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleCaught between broad smiles and sudden tears, former hostage mother Sylvia Cunio sat in her Kiryat Gat kitchen, describing the “unreal joy” of having her two sons, released hostages David and Ariel Cunio, back home.
“I get up in the morning, and I have nothing to worry about,” Cunio told The Times of Israel.
The Cunio brothers were among the 251 people abducted to the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, slaughtering some 1,200. The hostages, living and dead, have been released in tranches over the last two years, with the final living hostages set free in mid-October.
Two of the last 20 surviving hostages in captivity, David and Ariel, were released on October 13.
“They’ve changed,” said Cunio.
Cunio noted that David appears to be more mature, more careful to react and share his thoughts.
“He’s not the same boy; he was someone who always spoke his mind, he was the leader who would say whatever he was thinking, but now he considers things before he answers,” said Cunio.
Ariel, her youngest, was always quiet and is now “a chatterbox,” she said.
“What would you expect?” she said. “He spent 738 days on his own.”
Neither one has spoken to her yet about their experiences in captivity, said Cunio.
“They don’t talk and I don’t ask. They will tell in their time. I didn’t ask Sharon or Arbel either. I’ve never been a person who pries, and I won’t do that now, either,” Cunio said, referring to her sons’ partners who were also taken hostage on October 7, 2023, and subsequently released.
She said she’s thrilled to have Ariel playing with her hair again, curling strands around his finger, and to have David call her “mamita,” Spanish for mommy.
“The connection to the family hasn’t changed,” said Cunio. “We hug and kiss each other all the time.”
A total of eight members of the greater Cunio family were taken hostage by Hamas terrorists from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023.
David, 34, and Ariel, 27, were each taken from Kibbutz Nir Oz. David was taken with his wife, Sharon Alony-Cunio and their 3-year-old twins, along with Sharon’s sister Danielle Alony and niece Emilia, who were visiting Nir Oz that weekend. Ariel was taken hostage with his girlfriend, Arbel Yehoud. The Alony-Cunio sisters and their children were released in November 2023. Yehoud was released in January 2025 after being held captive alone for the entire 482 days.
Now both Cunio brothers are back home, joining their own families, their parents and their other two brothers.
“It’s hard to believe that eight people were taken from their houses and all of them are back,” said Cunio. “Now I just worry that they’ll be okay.”
In search of a new home
The family will not return to live on Kibbutz Nir Oz, said Cunio, crying as she spoke about their difficult decision.
“To our great sadness, we’re not going back,” she said. “My children were born there, but I lost so many friends there, I can’t be there.”
Cunio, 64, and her husband, Louis, 65, moved to Israel from Argentina in 1986, first living in Ashkelon with their eldest, then a toddler, before a friend brought them to the kibbutz.
She has described life on the kibbutz as supportive, “like an incubator.”
“They take care of you, feed you, house you,” said Cunio, who has worked in the children’s house, kindergarten, chicken coop, kitchen and kibbutz laundry room over the years. “I loved it more than my husband did.”
The extended Cunio clan had a large presence on the kibbutz. Aside from Sylvia and Louis, the kibbutz was also home to Louis’s mother, Esther, 90, the Cunios’ eldest son, Lucas, and his family, and their three other sons — Eitan, David and Ariel — who all lived in homes with their families just a few minutes walk away from one another.
Each unit of the Cunio family was in their own home on the kibbutz on October 7, said Cunio.
The elder Cunios survived the terrorist onslaught in their sealed safe room. Lucas and Eitan Cunio also survived with their families.
Esther was alone in her kibbutz apartment and somehow kept her cool with the terrorists who broke into her home, distracting them with a conversation about Argentinian football star Messi. One terrorist took a video with Esther holding his Kalashnikov before they left her alone, a video that went viral when it was later discovered.
It wasn’t until later in the day on October 7, when the survivors were gathered, that Cunio heard from a neighbor what had happened to David, Sharon and their girls, as well as Ariel and Arbel.
Besides the tragedy wreaked in her own family, Cunio said some of her best friends were killed on October 7, including three of her colleagues from the Nir Oz laundry, where she worked.
“Our best friends, Margit and Yossi, were killed,” said Cunio. “We ate lunch with them on October 6, and the next day they were killed.”
Margit and Yossi Silberman were South American immigrants like the Cunios. The couple was murdered in their home, and their house was set on fire.
The Silbermans’ daughter, Shiri Bibas, and her two young sons, Ariel and Kfir, were taken captive and killed in captivity. Shiri’s husband, Yarden Bibas, was taken captive separately from his family and released in February 2025. He and David Cunio are best friends.
“It’s too much,” said Cunio. “So many people were lost, so many people are gone.”
The Cunio family is thinking about moving to Kibbutz Beit Nir, near Kiryat Gat. For now, three of her sons are living near Cunio and her husband in Carmei Gat, the Kiryat Gat community to which many Nir Oz members were relocated nearly two years ago.
David and his family are currently living nearby in Yavne.
“It’s not far,” said Cunio. “I told David that it’s nothing compared to the distance I had to Argentina when I was married with a child and in Israel. It wasn’t an hour to get to my mother’s house, like I can get to David or vice versa. It’s nothing.”
It’s also nothing compared to when he was held in Gaza for the last two years, close in terms of distance, but impossible to reach.
For now, said Cunio, her wishes are simple.
“The wedding of Arbel and Ariel, that’s what we’re waiting for, that’s the dream,” she said. “My dreams have all come true, they’re all back and we’re all together.”
“Now I’m crying with happiness,” said Cunio, wiping at her tears with her hands, a smile on her face.
The Times of Israel Community.
